Books in the ISSN series

This book provides a step-by-step approach for organizations to reap benefits from a more sustainable approach. As organizations tackle global challenges, the faces of our businesses and our economic system are changing to consider the interests of all stakeholders rather than just shareholders. This book provides a step-by-step approach for organizations to reap benefits from a more sustainable approach. It begins with a brief history of the concept of sustainability as it applies to both performance and reporting. Implementing sustainability in an organization begins with the development of policies which are consistent with the expectations of its stakeholders. An organization's active participation in multi-stakeholder initiatives helps to align the policies with societal trends. Once the policies are developed, a management system is crucial to ensure congruence of policies with actual performance. Then, periodic reporting of performance based on well-recognized standards aids stakeholders in assessing an organization's performance-reporting also helps stakeholders to determine if performance aligns with their expectations. Both internal and external assurances build stakeholder trust in the organization's performance and reporting. Finally, the book concludes with a reflection on key messages and potential future actions for continuous improvement.

Risk Management for Nonprofit Organizations is a straightforward, yet comprehensive guide that can be used to easily communicate effective risk management ideas among the various stakeholders who comprise a nonprofit organization.This book positions risk management as a key element in successfully managing a nonprofit organization. Risk management in nonprofits has several unique characteristics that distinguish it from risk management in for-profit organizations. The authors present and explain specifically tailored strategies and tactics for risk management in nonprofits.Risk Management for Nonprofit Organizations is a straightforward, yet comprehensive guide that can be used to easily communicate effective risk management ideas among the various stakeholders who comprise a nonprofit organization. This is a book that can be used to educate and inform nonprofit professionals as well as the nonprofessional volunteers who are so critical to the operations of many nonprofits. It is a tool that will enhance both understanding and communication of risk management principles.Written in clear, jargon-free language, it is a resource that can be read by board members, professional nonprofit managers, volunteers, and other stakeholders of the nonprofit organization. As a tool for building a common appreciation and understanding of risk management, this book has the potential to become a valuable asset for the nonprofit organization.

This book is written for the person who has gained workplace experience and is thinking about striking out on his or her own as a consultant or a service-based entrepreneur.The reader is taken through the steps of deciding on whether they have the tools to start a new business and what they need to do before making the leap.The author focuses on the major steps of a start-up consulting practice, including business formation decisions, verbalizing the business offerings, determining market viability, and much more. Additionally, he dives into less-often discussed topics such as office space, business insurance, business ethics, and the impact on the family unit. Each chapter provides homework that outlines the steps the reader needs to complete to gain confidence they have the tools to succeed. This book also emphasizes the lifestyle implications of any solo proprietor service business.

As an extension of Volumes I and II of this series, this book contains a detailed elaboration of the Tesla story, in a way that also serves to examine the interaction of technology and economic forces that determine the structural profitability of any industry, especially capital-intense industries. The economics are the "e;five forces"e; introduced to the management lexicon by strategic management scholars. Here there is strong emphasis on the interplay among product technology, production and supply chains, and "e;Wall Street."e;The author is a retired business professor; his research interest has been the management of technology and innovation. For this book, he double-checked none of the 1,250 media items collected, accepting their overall veracity at face value. This approach advocates no one person, no one company, no one technology, and no portion of the global automobile industry. Analysis and practical application came foremost.

Physicians are increasingly moving into leadership roles and possess enormous potential to advance health care. However, clinical training and practice does not provide the necessary skills for a transition from clinician into physician-leader. In fact, the very skills that make for an outstanding physician often compete, or interfere, with the skills required to be successful in wider leadership roles.The authors provide the aspiring physician-leader with the understanding of what is required to be a successful physician-leader and the tools necessary for the transition including: Understanding the business of health care; Recognizing physician-leader psychology; Establishing influence, the bedrock of leadership; Creating a compelling strategy; Developing high-performing teams; Delegating to maximize leadership impact; Communicating for effectiveness; Negotiating for maximum benefit.This book is practical and realistic with case studies and recommendations on how to make the changes necessary to transform into a successful and fulfilled physician-leader.

Untenable helps identify untenable situations, describes the barriers to addressing them, and suggests novel ways to approach them. Even the best of us can find ourselves enduring situations that are negative and unsustainable. Too often, we ignore the situation or just make incremental moves. The boiling frog considers installing a ceiling fan. The deck chairs are arranged on the Titanic. High-performing people can boost their own performance even further by developing their skills to identify and remove their untenable situations. Untenable situations at best sap our creativity, vitality, and energy, at worst; they can be serious threats to our well-being or health of our organizations. Untenable helps identify untenable situations, describes the barriers to addressing them, and suggests novel ways to approach them. This book is perfect for leaders who would like to be even more effective, see that effectiveness cascade into better organizational results, and would like to see their businesses grow. The author describes what untenable situations are, what they look like for leaders and organizations, and why we do not address them appropriately. The book contains useful and practical insights for leaders to help coach themselves and others to identify their untenable situations, remove barriers that may be preventing those situations from being addressed, and prevent untenable situations from occurring in the first place.

This book willenable the reader to develop global strategies based on trade information and trade flows analysis.Developing global business strategies in today's competitive and disruptive environment calls for greater interaction between the business sector and government. Among the instruments available today are various market analytic tools. These tools, coupled with new business models, not only provide a competitive edge but also becomes a necessity to survive in the global ever changing trade environment.This book concerns everyone dealing with market selection, market strategies, and trade policy. The reader will be able to develop global strategies based on trade information and trade flows analysis. An analysis of the most competitive countries in world trade shows the importance of pro-business policies, access to modern infrastructures, investment in research, and increased productivity. The authors explain how to design practical strategies in a global context, greater competition and uncertainty due to the introduction of new business models.

The revolutionary effects of using accounting information systems by displacing manual information systems in the private and public sectors cannot be overstated. The benefits of this substitution of set of processes include increased mathematical accuracy, predefined fields and coding tasks, and de-emphasis of manual clerical labor in favor of labor adept in data processing. Reporting can be significantly automated, facilitating managerial power and control at a distance and the proliferation of global enterprises. The potential detriments are rarely accurately, completely, and timely addressed as information system vendors, management consultants, and corporate procurement teams race toward the popularly conceived state of the art. Systems are ballyhooed as continually improving in processing speed, functionality, and capacity. Users of these automated systems may not consider big picture effects, and they may not intelligently consider the conduct risks to their own enterprises by concentrating such global reach and influence at high levels of senior management without dedicating adequate resources to verifying the accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of the information systems. This book considers these risks.

This book teaches how to be different. It is based on personal experience serving in the trenches as a CEO as well as a director on public, private and nonprofit boards.The fundamental goal of any business is to be different-to be better than those with whom it is competing. Every company should be on a journey to be the preferred provider of products or services to its markets by offering a great customer/ client experience. A preferred provider is the company that customers and clients preferentially want to do business with, and often can charge a premium for what they provide.The fundamental goal of any individual is to be different-to be better than those with whom they are competing for that next job, whether internally or externally at a new company. Their goal is to demonstrate to the hiring manager that they are the best choice for that position. This book teaches how to be different. It is based on personal experience serving in the trenches as a CEO as well as a director on public, private and nonprofit boards.

This book focuses on developing alignment as the foundation for a successful digital enterprise. Over the last decade, digital technology has made deep inroads into every walk of life, but perhaps nowhere more than in the world of business. Technology now plays an enhanced role in driving business success, creating an entirely new paradigm in which business and technology are inseparable. Enterprises must ride the digital wave without losing their grip on the business basics to stay afloat. In this environment, business outcome is heavily dependent on the close alignment between business and technology.Aligning Technology with Business for Digital Transformation is a guide to discovering the power of business-technology alignment. Gleaned from decades of experience with global corporations that have shaped the current business-technology landscape, it covers an indispensable organizational requirement in a simple and relatable way.The book focuses on developing alignment as the foundation for a successful digital enterprise. Interlaced with real-life examples and anecdotes, it should help not only organizations in unlocking their true potential but also individuals in building the skills and aptitude necessary for succeeding in the digital world.

The force-multiplying power of business-technology alignment is acknowledged among the biggest contributors to enterprise success in the digital age. Even so, it is a missed opportunity in most organizations, or at best, restricted to a unidimensional coalition.Successful digital enterprises define alignment between business and technology along multiple dimensions. They invest in this alignment at the level of their culture, strategy, structure, process, intellect (innovation), function, and tactics. A systematic understanding and embracement of these seven dimensions of business technology alignment is at the core of a successful digital enterprise.Using familiar workplace paradigms and relatable examples, this book builds on each dimension of business-technology alignment towards strengthening the foundation on which a successful digital enterprise stands, using tricks and tips not found in textbooks and classrooms.If you are, or aspire to be, in an organization that relies on a convergence of business and technology to achieve success, this book is meant for you. It builds upon fundamental ideas in a manner designed to strike a chord in everyone-from interns to entrepreneurs.

This book is designed to be a guide to demystify the journey leading to preserving family legacy.It is based on the fact that a family business is a partnership among its members, and that the most successful family business succession plan is the one devised by the family itself. In this book, the author shares his unique experience working with hundreds of business families and next-generation family business entrepreneurs from across the world. His 7-Step Methodology(TM) offers an innovative and a systemic approach to family business succession planning and related conflict management. It focuses on the importance of maintaining an open dialogue among family members, and it paves the way to a structured conversation among those interested in achieving an orderly transfer of wealth from one generation to another.The author further discusses the elements that traditionally cause tensions among partners who happen to be family members, and offers solutions that have been tried and tested over two decades and that are based on real-life examples and success stories. This text is designed for families in business who wish to start a succession planning conversation and to family business advisors invited to facilitate such a conversation.

This book illustrates and explains a wide range of practical logistics strategies and analytic techniques to facilitate decision-making across functions such as manufacturing, warehousing, transportation, and inventory management. Logistics professionals must utilize a broad array of analytic techniques and approaches for decision-making. Effective use of analytics requires an understanding of both fundamental and advanced logistics decision-making techniques and methodologies. Further, logistics professionals must organize and view these analytics-based decision support tools through well-structured planning frameworks.In this book, we illustrate and explain a wide range of practical logistics strategies and analytic techniques to facilitate decision-making across functions such as manufacturing, warehousing, transportation and inventory management. We also describe how to organize these analytics-based tools and strategies through logistics frameworks that span strategic, tactical and operational planning and scheduling decisions.This book is intended for logistics professionals to use as a reference document that offers ideas and guidance for addressing specific logistics management decisions and challenges, and it will also serve as a valuable resource or secondary text for graduate and advanced undergraduate students.

This book illustrates how the traditional practice of project management advances to handle the more complex problems inherent to strategic organizational transformation.Projects are a part of everyday life in an organization. Tools and procedures for project management are well understood and applied. However, the management of projects by an organization for substantial transformation is less certain in both practice and study. An awareness of how to manage increasingly complex projects, and collections of projects, to achieve the benefits of organizational transformation becomes ever more crucial in the implementation of new strategies.This book goes beyond a simple review of tools and techniques common in most publications of project management. We illustrate how the traditional practice of project management advances to handle the more complex problems inherent to strategic organizational transformation. The linkages among projects, operations, and the foundations of an organization provide a perspective of how an organization might pursue the difficult changes required of comprehensive transformation. The fashion in which the project world interacts with the executive world through successive layers of project management principles is prelude to operational benefits realization.

This world first summary of the evolution of 2D chatbots in websites, backends of portals and social media apps, and conversationally advanced 3D mixed reality cognitive interfaces, serves several purposes.It dissects some of the best-known case studies to emerge from the past two decades of tech giants launching the best chatbot, or supposedly the smartest, intelligent virtual assistant. From Microsoft's Tay.ai to London's Eugene Goostman claim to turing test fame, from the market dominating Amazon Alexa to Gatebox's IoT innovation with its multi-cloned Japanese hologram girlfriend, this is the first ever history of bots.This book also touches on the Trump vs Clinton chatbot wars as well as the UK Labour Party's dating site stunt, including references made to Facebook Messenger bots and the impact of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Included in the book is a hands-on checklist and guidelines in for people wanting to buy or licence bots for their companies and organizations. The author also outlines the possible use cases and key issues to consider when sourcing and commissioning your first botification project, with the final chapters predicting where the future development - and development traps - might lie.

This book captures the entrepreneurial stories and mindsets of contemporary Native Americans.Native American entrepreneurs are important contributors to the American economy and social landscape. Faced with numerous challenges, many Native American entrepreneurs have learned to transcend tough obstacles, leverage resources, and strategically pursue opportunities to achieve business success. This book captures the entrepreneurial stories and mindsets of contemporary Native Americans.

Political macroeconomy refers to the interconnection between macroeconomic politics and macroeconomic performance. The expectational Phillips curve may be used to examine the economic aspects of this interrelation. Macroeconomic politics relates to voter behavior, presidential reelection ambition, partisan economic priorities, and special interests. These factors impact the fiscal and monetary policy actions of the president, Congress, and central bank. According to the electoral effect, presidents attempt to boost the economy before an election to increase reelection votes.According to the partisan effect, conservative presidencies are relatively inflation averse, while liberal administrations are relatively unemployment averse. The evidence, however, suggests that the electoral and partisan effects occurred idiosyncratically in the U.S. economy during 1961-2016. The economy also affects presidential approval, Congressional elections, consumer sentiment, voter participation, and macropartisanship. An international dimension of the political macroeconomy is the issue of free trade versus protectionism and the perspectives of economic liberalism, neomercantilism, and structuralism.

Mature businesses across all advanced countries are struggling to find new markets. Indian market has been estimated huge in size, approximately $1.2 trillion in purchasing power parity for the households earning an annual income of less than $4,000. This comes to almost 880 million of Indian population of which 22 percent is urban India and 78 percent rural India.Referred to as bottom of the pyramid/low income/subsistence markets, while these markets offer immense business opportunities they also pose challenges. The needs of this segment have to be addressed by the corporate world but it might need a new approach with new business frameworks for implementation. The companies must understand what constitutes value for this segment, how it is different from other segments and how firms can offer value through their market offerings; accordingly what could be the successful business models. Decoding Customer Value at the Bottom of the Pyramid: An Urban India Perspective answers these questions through a practical, rigorous and research oriented way. This book is a must read for business executives across the globe with an interest in the low income customers in India.

This text provides a succinct overview of concepts related to organizational success and offers a clear-eyed assessment of what is useful and what not. Every organization is unique. In order to make yours the best it can be, you need to understand the concepts presented in this book and know what questions to ask as you explore the potential in front of you. There are oceans of information available about how to build a great organization. Trends in how to create culture, attract talent, and boost productivity seem to shift as quickly as seasons of the year. This text provides a succinct overview of concepts related to organizational success and offers a clear-eyed assessment of what is useful and what not. It guides you in questions to ask yourself, your leadership team, and employees of your organization so that you can make wise and informed decisions about how to proceed on the path to a uniquely great organization.

The Economics of Online Gaming covers basic economic concepts, unique economic issues, and general economic themes. This book is made from the connections that the author saw when he compared his experience inside a video game with what he learned through a formal study of economic theory. Set in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) of Eternal Lands, it follows the true story of Mr. Mind, a gamer who builds a business inside the game world that he calls RICH. This business grows from a small start-up to an unregulated natural monopoly that abuses its market power by intentionally losing money to drive competitors out of business.RICH becomes so influential that it breaks the market process with a unique case of regulatory capture. Through this story, the book demonstrates how economic thinking is absorbed by experimenting inside an online video game.The Economics of Online Gaming covers basic economic concepts, unique economic issues, and general economic themes. Each of these topics begins with the context of a story and continues with an explanation of the economic theory behind it, finishing with a relevant real-world connection. It supports economic theory in an emotional way that cannot be shared through math or charts or graphs.Appendix B provides a comprehensive outline of ideas for teaching and discussion in each chapter.

This book offers a refreshing approach that provides unique insights, examples, tools, techniques, checklists, and templates for successful collaborations.Now, more than ever before, organizations are encouraging work collaboration both in-person and remotely to increase productivity, enhance innovation, and attain the best results. However, leaders and teams often lack the essential knowledge, tools, and techniques required to avoid failure and achieve optimal outcomes.This book offers a refreshing approach that provides unique insights, examples, tools, techniques, checklists, and templates for successful collaborations. It opens with a review of the collaboration decagon of competencies-a self-test to reveal strengths, gaps, and practical tips to apply. Then, collaboration mindfulness is explained and guidelines based on the COIN model explain how to put this crucial mindset into action. Next, practical advice is offered for how to both encourage and manage discussion and disagreement throughout all four phases of the collaboration process.Having a clear focus for the collaboration topic as a problem or an opportunity is reviewed in detail, with tips on how to decide and discuss most efficiently. Guidelines for how to manage conflict and deal with challenging people are offered, based on strategies for each of the four conflict stages. Additionally, whole-brain techniques are explained to help collaboration teams invent the most unique options and solutions for innovation and change. The book concludes with proven strategies for how to overcome eight common obstacles to collaborations with confidence.

Successful Recruitment provides the practical guidance and knowledge needed to recruit the right people, avoiding the many pitfalls that can arise in the recruitment process.It begins by identifying why recruitment is so often unsuccessful, leading to time, money, and energy being wasted in recruiting people who lack the attributes required to succeed in your organization. It then sets out how to put in place an effective recruitment process, by: Planning the process; Laying firm foundations, ensuring that job descriptions, person specifications, and application forms are fit for purpose; Ensuring that advertising is targeted to reach the right applicants; Sifting and shortlisting to ensure that the right candidates are selected for interview; Developing the knowledge, skills and processes to ensure that interviews enable you to accurately assess the candidate's ability to do the job; Effectively utilizing other assessment methods alongside the interview; Concluding the process properly and ensuring that the right candidate is appointed; Effectively inducting the successful candidate into your organization.The author pays particular attention to the recruitment interview, explaining three different approaches to interviewing and the key skills required to conduct an effective interview, as well as considers some of the specific issues involved in recruiting internationally. The book concludes by considering the future trends and innovations which will affect how recruiting is handled over the next decade.

Sustainable capitalism is more than a response to the environmental crisis. In this book, the authors propose a new conceptual business model as a contribution to global sustainable capitalism in the making, in an attempt assist in the education of global stakeholders about the importance, the rationale, and the pathway to the introduction of sustainable capitalism principles into global economics and business models.

Delivering Effective Virtual Presentations provides the reader with clear guidelines for creating and delivering webinars, e-meetings, and virtual presentations, including checklists and examples. In an era where technology and the skills required to navigate its use are deemed innate, people can experience some difficulty in transferring face-to-face skills to the virtual environment when they have not received any training or instruction in that regard. In many cases, books designed to assist in the learning process can be lengthy and cumbersome, rather than the clear, concise, complete, and correct format appreciated by readers. Delivering Effective Virtual Presentations provides the reader with clear guidelines for creating and delivering webinars, e-meetings, and virtual presentations, including checklists and examples. The concise content of this book will help fill the gap between existing knowledge, skills, and abilities for delivering effective presentations and those necessary for doing so in the virtual environment. This book is a user-friendly guide to prepare college students, employees, supervisors, managers, and executives, to be highly effective virtual presenters.

This innovative book explores the new relationships connecting computer science, social science, and the humanities.In our time of great and uncertain change, business, government, and education must partner in many forms of technical and cultural convergence-for the benefit of both human welfare and economic recovery.This innovative book explores the new relationships connecting computer science, social science, and the humanities. One popular form of artificial social intelligence, recommender systems, can become a far more valuable tool for research on the arts, beginning with movies and computer games, then extending to all the other art forms.While artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for description of physical reality, it must become both social and cultural if it is to be a valued tool of human expression. Many new developments offer opportunities and challenges for both industry and government policy. This book shows how artificial intelligence and related information technologies can converge successfully with the social sciences and humanities, so together they can achieve maximum benefits for people.

This book discusses competitive market dynamics explain contextual market entropy caused because of swift changes in the innovation and technology scenarios.It delineates the attributes of cognitive ergonomics of consumers responding to the market dynamics under the shrinking scenarios of large markets. The author analyzes the emerging theory of chaos, fragmentation of markets, and agile business models to gain advantage in the competitive marketplace and deliberates upon factors that are critical to success of firms. In addition, this book presents new insights on developing hybrid business models using both aggressive and defensive marketing strategies to manage market chaos and behavioral complexities of consumers.

The Practical Guide to Transforming Your Company is a concise handbook for conducting business transformations-defining and implementing a redirection in the company's core business or in its strategic positioning.Starting where such programs as LEAN and Six Sigma leave off, the text offers a well-proven methodology for conducting a comprehensive transformation (not a process-by-process efficiency enhancement). The book provides dozens of forms, figures, templates, and checklists the authors have developed through personal experience leading successful corporate efforts.In a sequence paralleling the process of transformation, individual chapters are devoted to the roles and responsibilities of the company leadership, the workforce, and the board of directors. Principles are reinforced by illuminating key success factors by examining government and commercial projects from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Written by two individuals with proven track records, this book is sure to produce success in any transformation endeavor.

This book presents notable examples of attempts by experienced managers to implement bad ideas that lead to failed change so that change managers are better equipped to avoid common pitfalls in managing change.Change management efforts often fail. Business case studies are littered with examples of failed change management efforts. Why this is so is a mystery, given the many change management models in existence, highly paid executives equipped with degrees from top-tier schools, and the millions of dollars spent in pursuit of change.Successful change management need not be a mystery, but perhaps change management success is best learned from failed attempts at change that seemed reasonable at the time according to theory-but proved to be bad ideas in retrospect. This book presents notable examples of attempts by experienced managers to implement bad ideas that lead to failed change so that change managers are better equipped to avoid common pitfalls in managing change.

Behind the Scenes of Health Care presents an extensive review of motivation and commitment among health care workers in support and bedside care roles.The publication includes two research studies: (1) motivation and commitment of support services employees in a health care environment and (2) the correlation between patient experience feedback and nurs-ing motivation and engagement. Additionally, the publication includes two case studies: (1) cultural disruption in a health care system and (2) a service organization review of turnover.Lastly, and most significantly, the publication provides a framework and model, The Tri-Factor Model, to assess and measure workplace dynamics of motivation, commitment, and culture that is also applicable to turnover analyses. Readers of Behind the Scenes of Health Care are provided tools to understand motivation, commitment, and cultural components in the contemporary workplace that may be applied to any organization.

This book gives business decision makers and students a clear overview of the history, current applications, and future potential of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency.The hype around blockchain technology is matched only by the innovation it inspires and the skepticism it provokes. This book gives business decision makers and students a clear overview of the history, current applications, and future potential of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency.It explores strengths and weaknesses, emerging opportunities, and perceived threats. Technical frameworks are presented in a business context to help strategists understand the risks and rewards of different approaches to blockchain implementation, and the decision factors in determining whether this is a viable solution to the problem at hand.